Thursday, August 24, 2006

PORTOLANI

We are getting used to Nobel prizewinners in politics and the arts turning out to be rather dubious figures. They are to be found among Peace and Literature Prize-winners. Sometimes they are already notorious, sometimes their notoriety is only gained afterwards. That is the case of the latest prizewinner scandal: Gunter Grass.He spent almost a life-time on the moral high ground telling his fellow-Germans to face up to the past, assume their guilt for it and follow his example as a socialist. Now at long last he himself admits that he served in the Waffen SS.Such was his fame as a prominent Left-wing intellectual that the revelation has caused a storm of discussion and acrimonious name-calling. What has deservedly provoked the greatest indignation is hot the fact in itself (after all he was a youth of 17 when he enlisted) but Grass’s pharisaical posture.

The question arises: which is worse, to be a pharisee or to be openly a scoundrel? A pharisee is necessarily a hypocrite and it is often said that hypocrisy is the tribute vice plays to virtue. Grass spent his life paying tribute to anti-fascism and in his case the Swedish experts can always plead ignorance.

But what about the open scoundrels? Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet who wrote sycophantic verses in honour of Stalin? Harold Pinter who produced a vitriolic diatribe against America in his acceptance statement? The Portuguese writer José Saramago whom Fidel Castro calls a friend, and who did his best to bring communism to power in Portugal?

Sixty years difference

Me in 1943 and Me in 2003

PRESENTATION

Portolani, known also as portolans, were early maps used by seafarers to find their way round the coasts of the Mediterranean. Because they were produced by draftsmen on dry land from the accounts furnished by medieval sailors they were not very accurate; but they were better than nothing and gave mariners some idea of the dangers to avoid. This site aims to chart some of the dangers facing modern navigators who must cope with even rockier costs.